Calderón’s Caldron Lessons from Mexico’s Battle Against Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Michoacán Vanda Felbab-Brown The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW SEPTEMBER 2011 Washington, D.C. 20036 brookings.edu Calderón’s Caldron Lessons from Mexico’s Battle Against Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Michoacán Vanda Felbab-Brown Acknowledgements wish to thank Mauricio Cardenas, Michael O’Hanlon, Theodore Piccone, and Seyom Brown for their I invaluable comments on the paper. Erasmo Sanchez and Gustavo Rivera provided excellent re- search assistance. My deep thanks also go to the many people I interviewed during the fieldwork in Mexico or consulted with beforehand and afterward. They all provided unique and important per- spectives and insights. These include officials of the U.S. and Mexican governments, members of the Mexican military and police forces, U.S. and Mexican academics, policy experts, and NGO representa- tives, members of the U.S.-Mexico business community, Mexican journalists, and foreign correspon- dents in Mexico. And I am also deeply grateful to the many other Mexican citizens who despite secu- rity risks to themselves and their families were willing to speak with me. For security reasons, many of my interlocutors must remain anonymous. The fieldwork and research were generously supposed by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. Calderón’s Caldron Lessons from Mexico’s Battle Against Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Michoacán ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements.......................................................................ii Preface . iv The Tijuana Law Enforcement Model and Its Limitations . 1 Ciudad Juárez and the Evolution of Mexico’s Security Policy..................................8 Socioeconomic Policies for Combating Organized Crime: The Case of Ciudad Juárez . 16 Organized Crime and State Authority in Michoacán.........................................24 Illegal Logging in Michoacán—Butterflies, Indigenous Communities, Organized Crime and Militias . 31 Mexico’s Dilemmas and Strategies for Dealing with Organized Crime . 37 Calderón’s Caldron Lessons from Mexico’s Battle Against Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Michoacán iii Preface ver the past several years Mexico has suffered from drug-trade-related violence, extraordinarily Ointense and grisly even by criminal market standards. Its drug trafficking organizations have been engaged in ever-spiraling turf wars over smuggling routes and corruption networks, turning the streets of some Mexican cities into macabre displays of gun fights and murders. The criminal groups have shown a determined willingness to fight Mexican law enforcement and security forces and an increas- ing ambition to control other illicit and informal economies in Mexico and to extort legal businesses. Finding Mexican police forces pervaded by corruption and lacking the capacity to effectively deal with organized crime, President Felipe Calderón dispatched the military into Mexico’s streets. Yet while scoring some successes in capturing prominent drug traffickers, the military too has found it enormously difficult to suppress the violence and reduce the insecurity of Mexican citizens. Institu- tional reforms to improve the police forces and justice system, although crucial for expanding the rule of law in Mexico, have been slow and will inevitably require years of committed effort. Meanwhile, patience among many Mexicans with the battle against the criminal groups is starting to run out. To a degree unprecedented in the history of U.S.-Mexican relations, Mexico has welcomed U.S. co- operation in combating organized crime. An assistance package approved in 2008 by the U.S. Con- gress and called The Merida Initiative first focused on beefing up Mexican law enforcement agencies through technological transfers and intelligence sharing. A subsequent iteration of the U.S. approach adopted in 2009 and referred to as Beyond Merida emphasized deeper institutional reforms. It also expanded the scope of policies to combat illicit economies in Mexico by emphasizing socio-economic approaches to strengthen the resilience of communities against organized crime. But the govern- ment of Mexico has found the U.S. partnership lacking and has complained about the persistence of demand for drugs in the United States and the flows of guns and criminal money from the United States to Mexico. This monograph explores the effectiveness of the security and law enforcement and socio-economic approaches adopted in Mexico over the past several years to combat the drug trafficking organiza- tions. It also analyzes the evolution of organized crime in Mexico, including in reaction to anti-crime actions taken by the Mexican government. It is based on fieldwork I undertook in Mexico in October 2009 and particularly in March 2011. Calderón’s Caldron Lessons from Mexico’s Battle Against Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Michoacán iv The first chapter examines the accomplishments and limitations of anti-crime strategies in Tijuana and their transferability to other parts of Mexico. The second chapter on Ciudad Juárez, the most violent place in Mexico, provides a similar analysis of the evolution and effectiveness of security policies in that city. The third chapter, also focused on Ciudad Juárez, explores the accomplishments of the city’s socio-economic approaches to combat illegality and violence and the challenges such policies face in design and implementation. The fourth chapter analyzes the complex and insidious ways by which organized crime has entrenched itself in the state of Michoacán and the shortcomings of the Mexican government’s policy of breaking up the drug trafficking organizations into smaller groups. The fifth chapter expands the analysis to encompass other forms of criminality in Michoacán, specifically illegal logging. It also discusses the rise of nonstate militias in Mexico in reaction to the criminal violence. The final chapter pulls the policy lessons together and provides a set of recom- mendations for reshaping interdiction approaches and improving law enforcement policies in Mexico not only to weaken the criminal groups, but also to reduce the violence. Calderón’s Caldron Lessons from Mexico’s Battle Against Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Michoacán v CHAPTER 1 The Tijuana Law Enforcement Model and Its Limitations midst Mexico’s relentless violence, Tijuana has been highlighted not only as an important suc- Acess story, but also as a law enforcement model for other Mexican cities. Its homicide rate has fallen from the peak levels of 2008 and 2009. In the first four months of 2011, 176 people were killed in the city, a 40% reduction from the same period in 2010.1 Violence in all of Baja California continued to decline through August 2011, driven to a large extent by the decrease in homicides in Tijuana.2 The bustling business center of the city gives every appearance of normalcy, with busy avenues dotted by street vendors. Although shopkeepers and business owners maintain that the number of tourists visiting the city is still considerably lower than before the drug violence started in 2008, the vibe of the center, at least, is one of economic activity and ease, a stark contrast to Ciudad Juárez. Indeed, so strong is the image of success that the man widely credited with reducing Tijuana’s crime—Col. Julián Leyzaola—has been moved to Ciudad Juárez and been appointed that city’s police chief. Since Tijuana is put forth as an example for others, it is important to examine what actually hap- pened in the city, how robust the improvements have been, and to what extent these policies can be applied to other areas. The Demise of the Tijuana DTO and the Rise in Violence in the City For almost three decades, drug smuggling from Baja California into the United States was dominated by the Arellano Félix DTO, also known as the “Tijuana Cartel.”3 Once a key conduit of drugs into the U.S. market, the DTO became progressively weakened starting in the 1990s, largely as a result of pressure from U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agencies. (The cartel’s founder, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, was complicit in the prominent murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico in 1985). 1 Amy Isackson and Vicente Calderón, “Three U.S. Citizens Murdered in Baja California,” Tijuanapress.com, June 2, 2011. 2 Grupo Reforma statistics cited in Transborder Institute, Justice in Mexico News Report, August 2011, www.justicein mexico.org. 3 Although the term cartel is frequently used to describe drug trafficking organizations, such groups in Mexico in fact do not have the power to dictate prices for drugs. Thus, they are not cartels in the economist’s sense of the term. Calderón’s Caldron Lessons from Mexico’s Battle Against Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Michoacán 1 The latest dramatic wave of violence in Tijuana began in 2008 when the Arellano Félix DTO fractured into two large groups. Fernando Sánchez Arellano, in charge of one of the factions, allied with the Bel- trán Leyva DTO and signed a nonaggression pact with the Zetas. His rival from the fractured Tijuana DTO, Eduardo Teodoro García Simental alias El Teo, made a counteralliance with the Sinaloa DTO. The subsequent warfare between the two alliances unleashed intense violence over control of the drug trade to the U.S. as well as over extortion rackets, local drug distribution in Tijuana, human smuggling, and even the city’s prostitution enterprises. On one particularly bad day in 2008, seventeen people were left dead on the streets after a fight between the two groups as scores of bullets littered the pavement. The Tijuana drug war has also contributed some of the country’s most gory incidents in a drug market already characterized by extraordinary violence and gruesomeness, where torture, beheadings, and dis- memberments have become routine, all as the DTOs try to outcompete each other in brutality.